A real-life Robin Hood, a Neo from The Matrix, Assange follows the path of Geronimo and H. Rap Brown. He fights for us, by revealing in black and white U.S. complicity in the torture and murder of innocents. Saving Assange may be the first decisive battle of the internet.

I have felt for years that the last defenders of our freedom would be the cyber-anarchists. We are not at freedom’s end yet, but cameras capture the average Briton 300 times daily. The Lord of Flies even wishes to invade our minds, to determine when we are lying to him.

There is hope. Mathematical results with practical significance may enable us at least to transmit encrypted messages in such a way that no one unintended can decrypt them. This comes from the fact that it seems to be time-consuming to factor the product of two large prime numbers. For this reason, the Lord of Flies seeks to limit in essence the size of the prime numbers one can use for encryption.

There are two ways we can protect Assange. First, we can complete the mission. The Lord of Flies wishes to shut down WikiLeaks. The world now sees the sham of the neutrality of Switzerland, a country the civilized world should have invaded years ago for giving aid to druglords, dictators, and the people who make those insufferable clocks. Interpol is now illegitimate. Sweden’s servility to the United States would make Tony Blair blush.

The way to prevent an epidemic is to make sure that 1 is greater than the reproductive ratio, the average number of people an infected person makes sick. Let’s spread the dis-ease. Already there are 200 mirrors of the WikiLeaks site. For every site the Lord of Flies pulls down, let’s put two up.

A second way to protect Assange is with the Golden “Mean”: Do unto others as they would do unto you. American cowards have threatened Assange and his associates, and their families, and myself, with death. Right-wing politicians and pundits have called for the execution of the people behind WikiLeaks.

Nothing stops the Left from doing the same, except the will, which is lacking, because American liberals often want to make friends with the Enemy. For example, in Oakland, California, local police illegally spied on a black church because it was engaged at that time in anti-apartheid activities. After apartheid ended, I asked a senior pastor of the church what had happened to the guilty police. He didn’t know. He hadn’t followed it up.

U.S. President Barack Obama, who said, of the war criminals in his predecessor’s administration, “This is a time for reflection, not retribution,” now says through his attorney general that he wants to “hold people accountable”–meaning Assange.

Let’s make an example, just as the Lord of Flies wishes to make an example of Assange. Pick any individual who has called for Assange’s death. Shut down that individual’s website with denial-of-service attacks. Publically accuse that individual of treason–feel free to invent a reason why, as the gnats of America’s right-wing media have no qualms about using this word improperly–explicitly pointing out that treason carries the death penalty.

Put that individual’s contact information, along with that of his associates, on a website, on Facebook, on everything. The correctness of this approach stems from ideas in evolutionary game theory, “Tit-for-Tat.” It is logical, ethical, and legal–although naturally it would make sense to set up these non-lethal internet SWAT teams outside the United States.

Very soon the cowards will become quiet.

And, in the quiet that kills hysteria, we may eventually succeed in saving the man who kicked the hornets’ nest.

About Jonathan David Farley

In 2005, Seed Magazine named Dr. Jonathan David Farley one of “15 people who have shaped the global conversation about science”. He is the 2004 recipient of the Harvard Foundation’s Distinguished Scientist of the Year Award, a medal presented on behalf of the president of Harvard University in recognition of “outstanding achievements and contributions in the field of mathematics.” He obtained his doctorate in mathematics from Oxford University in 1995, after winning Oxford’s highest mathematics awards in 1994. Jonathan Farley graduated summa cum laude from Harvard University in 1991 with the second-highest grade point average in his graduating class.

Dr. Farley’s mathematical work has been profiled in The Chronicle of Higher Education, in Science News Online, in The Economist Magazine, in USA Today, on Fox News Television, and on Air America Radio. In 2001, Ebony Magazine named Dr. Farley a “Leader of the Future.” He has also been profiled in Jet Magazine, in Upscale Magazine, and on the cover of the NAACP’s Crisis Magazine.

Dr. Farley has been an invited guest on BBC World News Television, BBC Radio, and U.S. National Public Radio. On November 18, 2001, Dr. Farley was an invited speaker at the “Stop the War” demonstration in London, which drew 100,000 people. His essay, “My Fellow Americans: Looking Black on Red Tuesday,” appeared in Beyond September 11: An Anthology of Dissent, which also featured essays by Naomi Klein and Noam Chomsky. Dr. Farley has written for Time Magazine, The New York Times, The Guardian newspaper, Essence Magazine, and the hip hop magazine The Source.

The City of Cambridge, Massachusetts (home to both Harvard University and MIT) officially declared March 19, 2004 to be “Dr. Jonathan David Farley Day”.

Comments

The questions never asked by the press is why the US Government should and does hide the truth from the American people? Why does the government treat its citizens as though they are the enemy? Who decided what is secret and what is not and what gives the people who do this the right to do it? What are the implications of hidden policy for the continuation of representative democracy as a system if the people of the democracy act without honest and accurate knowledge of their government’s policies? Then, aren’t those the policies of an elite instead of the people of the nation? Who chooses that elite and what are their qualifications? We as a people can only make good decisions when we act upon information that is accurate and true — not falsehoods spread as truth while the truth remains hidden as “official” or non-official “secrets”.

The Body Politic

Dave Zirin: She is our Jordan. She is our Jim Brown. She is our Babe Ruth, calling his shots. She is no longer content to dodge bullets, but understands how to stop them. Serena is that rare athlete who has not only mastered her sport. She’s harnessed it.